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CANNES, FRANCE—True to his showman ways, Aussie director Baz Luhrmann had a big reveal about The Great Gatsby and author F. Scott Fitzgerald at Wednesday’s Cannes Film Festival opening day press conference.

“I was at the premiere in the United States and an extremely regal woman came out of the shadows ... she took my hand and said, ‘I’ve come all the way from Vermont to see what you’ve done with my grandfather’s book,’ ” Luhrmann said, pausing for dramatic effect.

“And she said, ‘I think Scott would be proud of this film ... and by the way, I loved the music!’ .... So for me, that was about as good as it could possibly get.”

The woman from the shadows was in all likelihood Eleanor Lanahan, the granddaughter of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, a Vermont writer, filmmaker and artist who was born eight years after the Jazz Age author died of a heart attack in 1940 at the age of 44. Fitzgerald only lived to see one of the several movies that have been made of his 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, an early silent version.

Luhrmann’s new 3D and hip-hop tuned adaptation of Fitzgerald’s most celebrated novel, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the title romantic tycoon, opened last week in North America. The European launch here coincides with the opening of Cannes.

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Receiving thumbs up from Fitzgerald kin certainly helped remove any sting |Luhrmann might have felt from so-so reviews the film received from critics in North America (read the Star’s review), although regular moviegoers went to see it anyway — The Great Gatsby opened last weekend to boffo $51-million box office in the U.S. and Canada.

All of the major cast members were at the Wednesday morning presser, with DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan (who plays love interest Daisy Buchanan) sitting on either side of a beaming and loquacious Luhrmann. Their schedule for later in the day included a walk together up the red carpet of the Palais des Festivals, for the Cannes opening ceremonies and a screening of Gatsby.

As DiCaprio entered the press room, sporting facial hair he doesn’t wear in the film as Jay Gatsby, he asked for espressos for everyone with him on the stage, perhaps anticipating tough questions.

But none were forthcoming. Instead DiCaprio and Luhrmann took charge of the event, using the occasion to pledge their allegiance to each other (they first worked 20 years ago on Luhrmann’s Shakespeare redo Romeo + Juliet) and also to the “sacred text” of Fitzgerald’s novel.

Luhrmann said he hired notable Fitzgerald scholars to make sure his take on Gatsby didn’t seriously deviate from the book — apart from such dramatic flourishes as using rapper Jay-Z to compile a modern hip hop soundtrack.

“They kept us in check … Whatever the choices (for the film), it was about one thing: revealing that book,” Luhrmann said.

“And Leonardo would almost drive me crazy, but in a good way, because he would say, ‘Are we honouring that book?’ And that was our singular focus.”

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Luhrmann said he really felt for Fitzgerald, and how he suffered brickbats from the critics at the time of Gatsby’s first publication.

“A major critic of the day called Fitzgerald ‘this clown’ and said his characters were marionettes.”

But if Fitzgerald’s ghost is hovering somewhere above Cannes, he’d surely have the last laugh.

“By the way, last week he sold more copies of The Great Gatsby than he did in his entire lifetime.”

DiCaprio said when he first read The Great Gatsby in high school, he assumed like many people do that it’s a simple romance about a rich man trying to win back the heart of Daisy, the girl he lost to another rich man several years earlier.

But as DiCaprio got into the book’s deeper layers (it’s also an allegory of the fading of the American Dream), “It no longer became a love story to me. It became a tragedy.”

He said working for Luhrmann again after 20 years was not only a delight but also a challenge.

“He inspires you every day in the workplace to not only do your best but to dream big.”

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